Again OT, but if money wasn't an object, my choices would be Burmester, SimAudio Moon or McIntosh. Just coming off the Toronto Audio Video Show, these were the absolute best setups I've heard. Let your ears decide. OTOH I heard a $250K Mc system that was not too impressive.. they were using McIntosh speakers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greed

Sure, you can't take it as gospel, but after tons of research on forums, Mc is not recommended very often in any price range. I've been making the rounds to my local Hi-Fi dealers, and while they do deal with Mc, none of the setups I heard had any Mc gear. They are long past their prime, IMO.

Back OT.. the HD800 are the closest HP's that I found that match the speed, air and accuracy of ML speakers. Maybe that's why I like them so much. Stax are out of my snack bracket so they're not in the running for me.

I think that Pass amps especially against the Mcintosh solid state amps goes hands down to Pass. Macintosh makes better tube amps than they do with their solid state amps. I heard many Mac's solid states and the Pass amps are in another league., Nelson Pass is one of the very best designers making solid state amps and on the same level as Spectral which are the very best solid state amps I have heard. Mac strength has always been tube amplifiers. The older Pass Adcom designs also were excellent namely the 5500 and the 5800 amps Nelson designed for Adcom. They're were outstanding amps as well for a very reasonable price. i owned the Adcom 5800 and demoed the Macintosh 250 watt amp side buy side and preferred the Adcom in the early 90/'s and bought the Adcom for the PSB Stratus Golds.

I'm not going to say McIntosh as a whole over First Watt, but the MC302 was thoroughly spanked by the F5.

That 's not the amp FWIW I was referring to. oh and this isn 't the early "90s . A lot has changed in 20 years.

And I 'm a big fan of Pass too . Again my statements stand with the myth around the insane power requirements of said headphones. Frank's WA 5 does a fantastic job and doesn't need to put in. 30 W into 50 ohms.

That 's not the amp FWIW I was referring to. oh and this isn 't the early "90s . A lot has changed in 20 years.

And I 'm a big fan of Pass too . Again my statements stand with the myth around the insane power requirements of said headphones. Frank's WA 5 does a fantastic job and doesn't need to put in. 30 W into 50 ohms.